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dragonagewhore · 5 months ago

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Tradition

2.5k, f!Brosca/Alistair, Origins era. Featuring my Nat Brosca from some of my other stories, but it stands on its own and there have been some little characterisation changes over the years. Discussions of sex work and dwarf caste jerkishness within. AO3 link

Nat tries, "So I was thinking… what Leliana and Zevran were talking about, with the sisters." It's just easier to ask Alistair. Leliana's had to put up with enough of Zev's poking. And what can she say, it's this weird habit that formed right from Ostagar - Hey, big chatty human, tell me about weird human shit, and he always seemed happy to explain, like he was surprised to be asked. Surprised someone thought he knew anything, which always seems strange to her, because he clearly knows a bunch. So now she has a giant friend to ask about human stuff. Not much else to do sometimes, on the road.

"Mm-hmm." Alistair looks at her sidelong.

"Is that a human Chantry thing? Why do they care so much if you…?" She makes a tiny little hip-thrust movement.

He blinks and tries not to stare at that, and his ears have gone pink. Hard to see if you're squinting up at him through the sunlight, but definitely there. "Well, they're meant to be pledged to the Maker. Almost a kind of marriage. It stops you getting distracted by… baser matters." He raises a brow, voice turning wry. "So they say. But I've heard bored brothers."

"So they're only meant to screw the Maker?"

"That is…" He rubs at his forehead, voice wavering the way it does when he can't decide if he's horrified or about to crack up. "That is not how I'd put it. There's no, uh…" He still hesitates, like a Chantry sister might jump out of a bush and smack his knuckles just for saying screwing. "It's not a physical thing. Well, some scholars said maybe it was with Andraste, but we were always taught that was A Very Bad Theory and no-one should dare to suggest she actually enjoyed being the Maker's bride. Stoic pious misery all the way." He nods, stern and overly solemn, and oh, definitely about to crack up.

"Yeah, this is a human thing," she says, confused. "Not that you could get married to the Stone - it'd be like getting married to this." She gives a helpful stamp of the ground. "Or to your entire history. But the Shapers are allowed to knock boots like anyone else."

"Huh," he says. "Now I'm trying not to think about a bunch of old, beardy, very serious dwarves doing… things."

They stare off at the road ahead, both of them clearly fighting mental images and hoping for some convenient darkspawn. When none of the buggers come, the silence settles, broken only by the odd clank of armour and the quiet panting that says Bark's trotting next to her. The Blight hasn't hit here yet, not truly; birds still sing above them. Nat tries not to think how weird it is. The singing, and the being that high up. And trees. Trees are still a little hard to understand.

Initiates, Leliana said. She said she was one before she was a lay sister. And there were vows. And templars… Huh. She tries not to sneak Alistair a curious look, and finds the silence is hitting a different note. One with a wait in it. So she does what she'd do with Leske.

"You were in the Chantry, right? Have you never…?" Letting her hands take over, she makes a go on, you get the rest kind of motion.

He shoots the sky a look with a resigned kind of humour, mouth twitching. Yeah, he knew this was coming.

"Never…?" he prods, and hey, she hasn't pissed him off, at least. "Never what? Had a good pair of shoes?"

"You know what I mean," she nudges.

He goes on, with the kind of innocence that says the asshole's enjoying this, "I'm not sure I do. Have I never seen a basilisk? Ate jellied ham? Licked a lamppost in winter?"

Somehow, despite herself, now she's a little embarrassed too. Which was exactly what he was aiming for. Despite the fact that it's not the kind of question she'd normally blink twice at - but this isn't Dust Town, and he's looking at her amusedly. She says, "You're gonna be you about this, huh? I guess I deserve that." She gives him a contrite half-grin.

"Oh," he says, cheerful enough he looks like he's gonna start whistling, "I absolutely am." He shoots her a look - curious, and just the slightest bit nervous. "Tell me: have you ever licked a lamppost in winter?"

She waits him out, amused. "We didn't really, uh, have winter in Orzammar. We had a whole lot of lava flow. Kept everything warm."

He snorts. "Of course. Forgot I was talking to a dwarf there." At her raised eyebrow, he says, "Sometimes it feels like you've been here forever. It's… hard to imagine the surface without you."

She smiles at that; can't help herself. And then she checks her shoe and says, "Haven't done the other thing, either."

His eyebrows look like they're gonna shoot off his forehead, maybe make their own little encampment. "You haven't? Huh."

She wonders about that moment, but not too hard, until he starts a few minutes later, when they've taken a seat on a fallen tree: "Now, feel free to punch me for this…"

She raises an eyebrow, and waits.

"Is it wrong that I'm… surprised? That you haven't, well."

"Sex?"

"Mm. I mean, you flirt all the time…"

She looks at him straight-on now - wary, gone a little cold round the edges.

"No, that's not what I…" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Not what I meant! Not like that. I just mean - you can even keep up with Zevran. You talk like you know so much. You're… you're good at talking about these things. Without mumbling at your shoes. Unlike the other one of us here." She's heard the wary way he talks to, about, Zev. She was waiting for the look down his nose - she may be short, but it's sure as the Stone not necessary - but he sounds… admiring, under the confusion. Though sometimes he sounds like that about Zev's exploits, too.

She sighs. "Flirting's one thing. Follow-through's another. Flirting greases the wheels, makes people like you. Makes them laugh when they need it." (And at the half-smile he throws her way, she knows he gets exactly what she means.) "Look, where I grew up, a lot of sex happened. A lot. Not much else to do, sometimes. But a big amount of it was business, not pleasure." He blinks at that, and suddenly she remembers: shit, raised in a monastery. "I…" No, no, shit, raised in a monastery. She likes the way he looks at her. He's never going to understand. And then she'll lose the respect she's really not used to having from tall fuckers with royal blood. "Never mind."

"Nat." He puts out a hand like he's thinking of touching her shoulder, and then thinks better of it and tries to sneak it back to his side, like it never came out. He's getting that little line between his brows, the one that means he's damn worried. "I'd… I'd like to know. Please."

She takes a breath, and tries to think of a good way to explain. There isn't one. "So, I told you I used to beat the shit out of people for money." (He winces at that blunt summary of it the way he always does, but… then he waits for the rest. And somehow you're still here, looking at me like that, she doesn't add.) "That was just getting by. There are ways to actually move up in the world, if you're low-caste - to become a person. So, marriage in a higher-caste is one. Or… bearing some higher-caste's kid. Or just having that higher-caste on side, as in, if they take you as a lover."

Frowning, he says slowly, "For status. Right. Like… courtesans, I guess."

"Or concubines." She rests her cheek on her hand. "Yeah. My big sister was one of those."

"She…? For…? Oh."

She can't meet his eye; call her a coward. Weird to be having this conversation in a meadow with a bunch of cute little daisies. "It was her way out, right? Get laid by some high-caster, get knocked up. We had an, uh, benefactor."

He's looking at her with a slow, slightly pained realisation, and reassessment in his eyes. Shit, that was never what she wanted. Here it is.

"He tried to tell me I'd be better off that way, like Rica. Said I was" - she shrugs, doubting he'll understand; surfacers don't seem much interested in dwarves, or what dwarves want - "nowhere near my sister, but I'd be good enough. In the right light. With a lot of makeup. If Rica wasn't available."

"That's… Nat…" Now it's all pain, and confusion. Of course he doesn't get it. Or he doesn't get why Beraht would say that. Which… that's almost too scary to contemplate, someone looking at her and seeing more than not-Rica. Easier, safer, to figure he's just freaked out by all the sex and poor people. Less room for disappointment.

"I told him to go fuck a nug and nearly broke his damn nose. Leske pulled me off him. Probably saved my damn life. I reasoned our, uh, benefactor out of it in the end. He said hey, you're ugly but you're good with your fists, and a sword. No-one'll want to deal with you in their bed, anyway. Might as well make yourself useful to me some other way."

Alistair makes a disgusted noise under his breath - no, not disgusted, furious. There's steel in his eyes, now, the type he tries so hard to hide. At her, or…? No, she knows him better than that. She doesn't know what to make of it. And then he seems to catch the question in her eyes - his face clears as if he doesn't want to frighten her (as if she's that easily scared). He's back to his normal kind of flatness when he says, "He sounds just charming."

"Yeah, he sure was." She swallows, and tries not to fidget on her half of the log. "Listen… my sword saved me. All I saw, sex was just power, and not always yours. It was a job. It never seemed like it was for fun."

His voice is quiet. "Or, you know, for… love?"

She blinks at him. Oh. Yeah. "Or that, I guess. I mean, sometimes that's what the high-casters say it is. That they fell in love with some pliable Duster and wanted to 'save them.' To make them a dwarf, not just some stain on a rock. But that's not what I've seen."

His gaze is on the clouds, and his voice is soft. "Funny, isn't it? I've never done it because there wasn't much of it about, and for you, there was too much." She snorts, and at that, he seems to come back to himself. "You've never… I mean… You've never wanted to?"

"To screw a fifth-son lord or some princeling?"

He flinches, and tries badly to hide it.

"Shit, that's not what I meant. I promise, I…"

He rubs at his forehead, and says with a wan sort of smile, "I know. Now who's talking themselves into circles?" He looks at her, eyes clearer now. "That's… genuinely not how you think of me, is it? It's like you forgot for a moment there." He stares at her in something almost like awe.

She shrugs, sheepishly. "Human politics are tricky. Hard to keep track of. My salroka who's the other Warden and who smashed his shield into an ogre's nose, that's easier."

He gives her a sidelong grin. "I've heard you about how things work down in Orzammar. I know that's not true. But… thank you." His eyes are so earnest they're hard to look at.

She stares up at the sky instead, and relents. "Your earlier question… I've never wanted it the way I got it offered. Maybe if the right person came along. Someone who wouldn't treat me like a piece of roast nug." She squints at him. "Still can't believe you're a virgin, though."

His ears are going pink again. "Oh, great. There I thought I'd avoided the mockery about that."

"No, I mean…" She waves her hand vaguely at him. "You had a few months on the road, with Duncan and the others. You're a damn Grey Warden. When we're not getting hunted down like traitors. And funny, and built like you're made of stone-brick, and you're handsome, right? Why aren't the human women jumping on that?"

He gives her an odd look - surprised, curious. "You think I'm handsome?" There's a smile sneaking onto his face.

Her tongue feels clumsy, suddenly. Was that not - did he not know? "In a human kinda way. It's pretty obvious. You're polite, sure, and you were raised in some human abbey, but… like I said. You've had offers too, right?"

His ears are pretty much glowing like lava now. It's kind of amazing. "Honestly? I was raised to take that kind of thing seriously. And it stuck. It's not that I… I wanted it to be with someone I cared about. For it to be…" He swallows.

"Special?" she finishes.

"That." He squints into the forest, like he's ashamed. "Right, you can start laughing with Zevran now…"

She puts her hand on his arm. "Hey. I get it."

He looks back to her, and exhales, eyes dark and appraising. "Yes. I think maybe you do. I… Thank you. For telling me. About your sister, and about why I was wrong in… what I'd assumed. And for trusting me. I think I understand. As much as some surface human can, anyhow."

She'd expected him shrinking away from a companionable touch now he knew she was a filthy Duster who had no idea how to court, or what normal human interactions were, not… that. She stares at him a second. "Sure," she says, after too long.

He looks like he's weighing his options, and then he says carefully, "Nat?"

"Uh-huh."

"You don't need the right lighting, or the makeup, or… anything. You really don't."

Yeah, now she's well and truly staring at him.

"In a, dwarf kind of way," he offers, with a hint of his old wryness.

"Huh," she manages.

He laughs, a little nervously. "So, who wants to talk about darkspawn guts some more?"

"I, uh, sure," she manages, but she's still feeling a little like she got hit round the head with a pommel. He thinks -? "What happens if one throws up on you?"

He laughs, caught in between horror and a screwed-up kind of delight that sounds like it's a Grey Warden thing. "What, do you think people have got the darkspawn drunk?"

Shrugging, she tries to find her old rhythm. "Couldn't hurt to ask."

"Oh, now I need to see that…"

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